Firefly (39 page)

She climbed the stairs to the sidewalk and ducked under the dripping overhang, though she couldn't avoid a drenching stream down her back.  It didn't matter: she was already soaked nearly through to the skin.  While trying to stomp the worst of the mud off her shoes, Julie realized she had no idea how she was to pay for the dry goods she intended to purchase.  She had brought not a single penny with her.

Under no circumstances, despite the orders from Morgan regarding aprons, could she put the bill on his account.

Expecting Ada, who usually waited on customers, Julie was surprised when Simon strolled from behind the hardware counter at the back of the store.

"Mornin', Miss Julie," he greeted.

"Good morning, Mr. McCrory."

She nodded politely and smiled, and Simon thought that wet and bedraggled as she was, she certainly didn't look much like the girl he and Lucas used to watch carrying dinner to her father.  Not that the storekeeper was ready to say she was pretty, not yet anyway, but she had lost some of that dreary, dusty, worn-out look.

"I came for some yard goods," she told him as she walked purposefully in that direction.

"Good day for sewin, ain't it."

"Yes, I suppose it is." She reached the sloppily piled stack of bolts and ran a finger down the edges.  The calicos and ginghams were mixed right in with the denim and muslin and sturdy broadcloth, with nothing in any particular order.  "I'll take four yards each of the black, blue, and brown broadcloth.  No, not the brown.  Make it this green instead."

Simon pulled the bolts from their places in the stacks, miraculously avoiding toppling the colorful ziggurat.  While he unrolled and measured the fabrics, Julie studied the bright prints and checks.  It was hard to make up her mind when faced with so many choices, especially after such a long time without the temptation.  She particularly liked a soft lavender gingham but knew it wouldn't be suitable, nor would the bright red and yellow calico that sat on the top of the heap.

She had to be practical, she reminded herself.  Plain and practical, just as she had always been.

"And three yards each of the blue and white muslins plus this yellow."

Simon was panting by the time he had pulled those three bolts out, because the butter yellow calico, printed with small blue flowers, was on the very bottom.  But as he realigned the tottering stack, Julie caught sight of another bolt, so slim it had lain hidden between the others.  Once she had seen the clear cornflower blue color, however, she knew she could not leave the store without it.

"And this blue batiste: is there enough left on the bolt, do you think, for a blouse?" she asked Simon.

Very carefully, he extracted the fabric from under the weight of those pressing down from above.  The stack wobbled, startling Julie to reach for and steady it with a gasp.

"Can't tell without measuring it."

He was grumbling, she could tell.  This wasn't Simon's area of expertise, and he acted as though perhaps he felt foolish measuring out and cutting fabric for women's clothes.  Julie had felt some self-consciousness herself at first, when she was still thinking about how to pay for the goods, but the idea of sewing that lovely soft fabric into a garment brightened her entire day.

"Then measure it," she ordered.

It came to four and one quarter yards, more than enough, and Julie took it all.  And while Simon was measuring it, she had even thought of a way to pay for it.

"You can put this on my father's account," she told the storekeeper calmly.  After all, Katharine had suggested the purchases and had even offered to help with the sewing.

None of it seemed odd enough to warrant analysis until Julie stood at the counter while Simon totaled the amount of her purchase, and then wrapped the bundle in paper to protect everything from the rare but welcome rain.  Watching him, she began to think about the work ahead of her, today and in the weeks to come that it would take to finish all the garments.  She would be glad for Katharine's help, which she suddenly realized had never been offered before. 
Why now?
she wondered.

Barely remembering to thank Mr. McCrory, Julie wandered slowly away from the counter and towards the door, her mind fully occupied with questions.

Most of them concerned her mother.

Katharine had looked remarkably fit this morning, standing over the kitchen range with a spatula in her hand.  In the weeks since beginning the treatment Morgan had prescribed, Katharine had had moments of seeming vigor, but she never quite lost that invalid look about her.  Her eyes drooped lazily, except when she was alone with a magazine, and she almost always walked with that same languid effort.  Her headaches came and went with puzzling irregularity, and her digestion seemed little improved at times.  Yet today, as Julie had remarked to herself immediately on the discovery, Katharine looked as though she had never been ill.

Which was exactly what Morgan had told Julie.  She had almost forgotten his accusation in the wake of other confessions of that afternoon.  Was it just yesterday? And the one question for which Julie could find no answer began to spread like a plague, first one isolated infection and then another, until by the time she reached her own front porch again, drenched without having felt the rain, the curiosity had become an epidemic.

"Oh, Julie, look at you?" Katharine exclaimed from her chair in the parlor.  "Get right upstairs and out of those wet clothes!  I'll put on some tea."

Julie set her package on the bottom stair and then proceeded up.  In the privacy of her room, she dared to examine some of those questions individually, like a surgeon dissecting a cadaver.

Why, if Katharine had never been ill, had she pretended to be for so long? Two possibilities came to mind at once.  Either she hated her daughter and took some kind of revenge upon her by forcing her to this slavish existence, or she maintained an elaborate fiction simply to deny her husband his marital rights.  Julie thought, in an uncharitable moment, that this latter was almost absurd.  If indeed Katharine were afraid of the results of another pregnancy, she could merely have used that as an excuse.  If, on the other hand, she intended only to deny Wilhelm, she could still have pled the risk of pregnancy.  Couldn't she?

Julie peeled off her dripping dress and shivered until she found a towel to dry with.

The other alternative, that Katharine hated her first-born, raised no such difficulties of explanation.  Or at least not until this morning.  Why, if she so disliked Julie all these years, had Katharine suddenly changed her tune to one of helpful kindness and almost affection?

And,
Julie asked herself,
why am I suddenly so suspicious?

She pulled on a dry blouse and stepped into the frayed green skirt, then padded down the stairs in her stockinged feet, having left her wet, muddy shoes by the door.  When she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, she looked into the parlor, expecting to find Katharine still lounging with her periodicals.  Instead, the sound of rustling paper and light humming drew her eyes to the dining room.

"The tea is all ready, there on the sideboard," Katharine told her between snatches of murmured melody.  "I've been looking at your selections, and I can't say I entirely approve."

Julie felt her heart sink to her toes.  The blue batiste.  No doubt Mama felt it was impractical and extravagant.  No doubt Mama would tell her to return it.  Worse, perhaps Katharine would appropriate it for herself.

But before Julie had a chance to say a single word in her defense, Katharine went on, "I like this blue very much, and it will make up beautifully, but the others are so plain.  Did Mrs.  McCrory have nothing else?"

"I...I bought what I thought I would need for working, Mama," Julie stammered, confused and somehow embarrassed.  The batiste, which she had thought would meet with disapproval, was the only thing Katharine did like.  Just another source of confusion and curiosity.

"Well, while you were shopping, I sent Willy over to Donnie Kincheloe's so he'd be out of our hair.  I suggest we use this opportunity to get as much done as possible.  Shall we start with the blue batiste?"

*   *   *

Morgan stepped into McCrory's and waited patiently while Simon assisted a customer.  Seeing that it was Julie and that she was buying several pieces of dress goods, he almost came out of his concealing shadow, but something held him back.  He did not want to embarrass her if the fabric were not for the dress he owed her, nor could he even mention the gift itself.

And when he heard her tell Simon to put the materials on her father's account, he shrank back further into that gloom that was mental as much as physical.  Only after she had left did he walk out from behind the lantern-festooned post and approach the counter.

"Sorry to keep you waitin', Del," Simon apologized while he took the requested cheroots from the humidor.  "Miss Hollstrom must be gettin' her trousseau ready."

Black brows arched over the murky green eyes.

"Her trousseau?"

"Well, I can't imagine her buyin' fancy French material for anything else.  Not quite the stuff to wear workin' for you, anyway."

"Yeah, you're right, I guess," Morgan mumbled in return, reluctant to say anything more.  He nodded to Simon and walked on out into the rain.

Chapter Twenty-three

Mother and daughter worked until noon, when Julie took lunch to her father.  The rain had stopped and a brilliant, clean-washed sun shimmered in the steam.  Wilhelm grunted something about the meal being better than what he usually had, but he did not make it a compliment.  Rather, his words hinted at adding to Julie's guilt for abandoning her family's welfare again.  Julie was too confused and too preoccupied with new problems to worry about old ones.

She stopped for a few moments at McCrory's on the way home to buy a card of jet buttons.  There were plenty of plain white pearl buttons in the sewing basket, but Katharine had insisted black would set off the blue batiste much more strikingly.  Julie had not been able to argue with that enthusiasm.

Katharine proved to be of much more help than Julie ever expected.  Almost as though one arm weren't held captive, Katharine pinned and cut and measured with no sign of disability.  Julie had to do all the sewing, but with Katharine to do the rest, she was able to spend almost all her time at the little sewing machine, until the constant treadling cramped her calf muscles.

The effort was, however, worth it.  Long before Wilhelm was expected home, Julie and her mother had finished the blue batiste blouse and the black broadcloth skirt.

Julie put them on and was delightedly parading in front of the little mirror above Katharine's dresser when the front door banged open and then slammed shut.

"Juliet Rosalind!"

Wilhelm's voice thundered louder than the morning's storm.

Katharine glanced at the clock on the dresser and then whispered, "What is he doing here? He shouldn't be home for another hour!"

The abject terror in her mother's voice frightened Julie more than her father's unmistakable wrath.

She walked from the bedroom to the landing at the top of the stairs and called down, "We are here, Papa."  She couldn't be sure if her voice trembled or not, but her knees threatened to collapse.

Wilhelm, standing at the foot of the stairs, spun around, his hands bent into fists at his waist.  In one of them, Julie noticed, he held a small slip of white paper.  For a moment, father and daughter stared at each other, unmoving, until Wilhelm brandished the paper and his fist at her.